It all seems a bit for naught, with the earth in obvious upheaval, spawning one natural disaster after another and careening toward a horrible, fiery, and certain end next year. But until that happens, there are some pretty cool gadgets to play with! Here's the best of bunch from August.

In:

Best Windows Ultraportable
The Vaio Z is proof that Sony can still do some things very right. The screen is beautiful. Borderline jaw-dropping, and makes watching HD content a joy. It's light, nicely designed, and blazing fast—pretty much everything you'd want in an ultraportable. Its one downside is a seriously tiny and lacking trackpad. But still, it's an astonishingly fast and fluid machine otherwise.

The Vaio Z is Sony's sculpted little reminder that companies besides Apple can make exciting…
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Best Cloud Storage Service
It's SugarSync—with a few caveats. SugarSync was the best
confluence of price, ease of use, and features, but if you're looking for pure, sheer simplicity for sharing your sharables with the lovable luddites in your life, Dropbox might still be the better option. And if you're a total cheapass, maybe take a look at Google, or Microsoft's SkyDrive.
Best 4G Network
You already knew this, but here it is in writing: Verizon's LTE network
is the country's fastest 4G service. LTE is just better. AT&T's in the process of field testing its own LTE service, though, so we'll have a fight on our hands.
Best iPod Dock
So yeah, $600 is a lot to spend on an iPod dock. But the Bowers and Wilkins Zeppelin
positively drips with engineering. It has 5 brand new drivers-2 mids, 2 tweeters, a sub-each powered by its own class-d amp, and 150 total watts of oomph.
Best Mobile Bluetooth Keyboard
The Targus Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard for Tablets
came out on top of our mobile bluetooth keyboard deathmatch. It doesn't fold or roll up like some of the other ones, but after using the it for a few minutes you forget it's undersized. The individual keys have some separation between them, making keyboard errors less frequent, and it's attractively priced.
Best Affordable Amplifier
The Topping TP-30
is the best audiophile-worthy amplifier to be had for under $500.

Out:

Best Windows Ultraportable: Like last month's MacBook Air, this is more a passing of the torch, with the elder Vaio Z giving way to the new model.